WILDHORSE ISLAND – He has — or at least had — a name, the last wild horse on Wildhorse Island, though no one remembers it.
He also had ribs, and they were visible through his hide. It wasn’t due to lack of food.
“He’s getting up there in years,” explains Jerry Sawyer, who manages the seven state parks located around Flathead Lake for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. “We were not sure he was going to make it through the winter. His ribs were showing, even though there was plenty of forage. Things are just shutting down because of old age.”
But it was a mild winter in northwestern Montana and the horse survived.
And now he’s got a partner, a wild mustang transplanted to the island in December, and three to four more on the way later this spring.
What’s an island called Wildhorse, after all, without wild horses?
The last horse standing on Flathead’s largest island was the final surviving member of a group transplanted to the primitive state park in 1993.
FWP’s management plan for Wildhorse, which otherwise teems with mule deer and bighorn sheep, calls for a herd of five wild mustangs to run free on the island’s 2,164 acres, 99 percent of which is state park land. The herd’s purpose is to honor the island’s name, and a wild horse sighting is one of the most prized treasures for island visitors.
The last herd of five started dying off from old age in 2001. Two went in the last two years, leaving the one horse standing.
Sawyer estimates he’s 25 to 30 years old — very much “sunset” years in the lifespan of a typical horse.
The newest horse on the island is 6 or 7 years old. He originally ran free in Oregon or Washington, and was part of a Bureau of Land Management roundup who was adopted out.
“Someone had gotten it, and either it got loose or was let loose, and they couldn’t find the owner,” Sawyer says. “The horse was captured and returned to the BLM. They called us and said they had a horse in Missoula if we wanted it.”
Since being transported by a barge to the island in December, Sawyer got reports that the newcomer and old-timer found each other.
“They’re pretty social animals,” Sawyer says. “At first they’re pretty wary, but over time they work out who’s the more dominant. There’s always a lead horse in a herd.”
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Horses have been on the island since local Indians kept them there and out of reach of other tribes. The island’s name dates back to the 1854 journal of explorer John Mullan, who called it the “Wild Horse” island. Mullan recorded the story of a Pend d’Oreille Indian whose father had horses stolen from him by the Blackfeet. To retaliate, the son stole horses from the Blackfeet and swam them out to the island for safekeeping.
Mullan reported a band of 60 to 70 of the animals on Wildhorse in 1854.
After the Flathead Indian Reservation was opened to homesteading a century ago, horses continued to be a part of the Wildhorse story. Sawyer says Col. Almond White, who bought all of the island’s unclaimed land in 1915 — and introduced the bighorn sheep to Wildhorse — also kept horses there.
The Rev. Robert Edington and his wife, Clara Isabelle, constructed the Hiawatha Lodge — the first, last and no-longer-standing resort on Wildhorse — in 1931, and kept horses for the use of their guests.
In the 1940s and ’50s, 100 Arabians and thoroughbreds were kept on the island by J.C. Burnett, a New Jersey osteopath who then owned most of Wildhorse.
The family of the last major landowner, Bourke MacDonald, made today’s Wildhorse possible. With the exception of 52 lots sold around the three-mile-long island — and with the help of the Nature Conservancy and the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund — Wildhorse was sold at a fraction of its appraised value after MacDonald’s death.
Since 1978, it has belonged to the people of Montana.
A group of local 4-H Club members helped in 1993 when three horses were taken to the island to join two already there, and the kids did name the horses during the operation, Sawyer says.
Officially, they’re known as “46117” or whatever number they’re given, but “they named them Blackie, Buck, Happy — I can’t remember exactly,” Sawyer says.
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The move can be easy, or it can be difficult, he adds.
“Obviously, they’re wild horses, so they’re not used to people,” Sawyer says. “I’m not a horse person per se, but I know the ones in ’93 were pretty difficult. Once we had them in the trailer, we didn’t let them go till we were on the island. We transported them trailer and all. Once you lower that loading ramp, they shoot out.”
The single horse in December was much easier, and was taken out of the trailer before the ride over on the barge. Use of the barge is donated by Cromwell Island manager Scott Smith, and the lake has to be fairly calm for the trip.
The state is working to make Pryor Mountain mustangs the next batch of horses transplanted to Wildhorse, Sawyer says — wild horses with Spanish and Portuguese bloodlines.
All will be geldings, one of the state’s policies.
“Logistically, things have to fall into place,” Sawyer says of the move, which he hopes takes place this month or next. “We want to get them from Great Falls, onto the barge and over to Wildhorse all in one day. You’re looking at weather, winds and Scott’s barge being available.”
Once they’re on the island, “We don’t do anything with the horses,” Sawyer says. “We don’t have vets go out and check on them. Once they’re out there, they’re on their own for the rest of their lives.”
And, he notes, they do well. There’s plenty of forage, lots of protection from the elements, and virtually no predators to speak of.
“Coyotes,” Sawyer says, “but they wouldn’t do anything unless the horse was in a situation where it couldn’t get up. Mountain lions will swim out to the island, but it’s not very common, and even if they do, they’d go for something smaller than a horse.”
Assuming all goes well with the next transplant, it will probably be another two decades before Wildhorse Island starts to run out of wild horses again.